git diff - git difftool - vimdiff - How to compare two files from column 1 to 72 - It's possible config one of this tools

Question

For mainframe modernization I'm using git to modify my Cobol programs.

To compare two programs one in Dev stage and another in Prod stage, I would like to compare them only from column 1 to 72.

I tried using git diff, git difftool and vimdiff but I don't know how to customize or set them and replace the default which is 80 to 72.

I tried to find the .vimrc file on my pc but the result is not a success.

Unsuccessfully, I tried to set the tool via vim but that does not work.

Please, could you help me? Regards.

I tried to find the .vimrc file on my pc to set the new parameters but I don't find it I tried to set the tool via vim but that does not work.

jthill · Accepted Answer · 2023-07-05 01:16:14Z

4

You can specify text conversions to use when prepping files for diffing,

echo \*.cob diff=strip73on >>.git/info/attributes

git config diff.strip73on.textconv 'cut -c1-72'

and from then on anything using git's diff core in that clone will ignore those files' line numbers.

answered Jul 5, 2023 at 1:16

jthill

62.2k5 gold badges91 silver badges153 bronze badges

Sign up to request clarification or add additional context in comments.

1 Comment

viejo Over a year ago

By the way folks, these commands are for Unix and can be issued in a Git Gui window by selecting "Repository" menu, select 'Git Bash'. The 'cut' command can easily be modified to strip leading sequence number cols 1-5 from traditional Cobol statements. @jthill, I looked long and hard for this solution to uncontrolled source sequence field cols 73-80; thank you so much. This answer deserves to be more widely known among Git users, especially those who may also require '--no-index'.

svlasov · Accepted Answer · 2023-07-05 00:34:55Z

2

You can extract the first 72 characters of either of the files using cut and compare those (replace file.1 and file.2 with actual paths to the files you want to compare):

COL=72
FILE_A=file.1
FILE_B=file.2
diff --unified -- <(cat "$FILE_A" | cut -c 1-$COL) <(cat "$FILE_B" | cut -c 1-$COL)

If you want to compare side by side, use diff --side-by-side.

edited Jul 5, 2023 at 0:34

answered Jul 5, 2023 at 0:26

svlasov

10.7k3 gold badges42 silver badges43 bronze badges

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

git diff - git difftool - vimdiff - How to compare two files from column 1 to 72 - It's possible config one of this tools

2 Answers 2

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Hot Network Questions

Collectives™ on Stack Overflow

2 Answers 2

1 Comment

Comments

Your Answer

Sign up or log in

Post as a guest

Related